


the less than amiable ramifications of snogging your best friend

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 04:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2095968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm not sick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the less than amiable ramifications of snogging your best friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kf1n3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kf1n3/gifts).



> this got a few notes on tumblr so im gonna cross post here, apparently im writing shitty sick fic now, i am literally burning in fucking hell and i am fucking loving it, also this is probably ooc but i just (hands upturned towards the fucking sky) i dont even care anymore, i am a foul gay illegal heathen, mods help me lock myself in fandom jail
> 
> im @hhhbullshit if youre after a weird shit fuck ass crap dirkjake blog of some description
> 
> uhhhhh warnings for like kissing, really unsanitary shit/gross stuff, food, emetophobia/vomit, illness & specifically disease. just as a heads
> 
> also ive had monovirus this past year so when i got this request i was like haha Wringing My Hands time 2 make dirk suffer with all my fucking ailments. love it. fucking dirk. so ya theres that. ok whatever ill shut up have fun enjoy this trainwreck. also what the fuck constitutes as like, teen or w/e, is snogging general or like, Teen Level. what the hell. ok yeah sorry bye

“I’m not sick.”

“Hogswallop. Literal bloody hogswallop.” you punctuate each word with a shake of the blanket, which has gotten a little musty from being under your bed for so many years, and then in your sylladex for ages. Jungles are hot alright!

“I’m really not.” Dirk says, and he dissolves into a coughing fit, then, body disagreeing.

You stop shaking the blanket to give him a Look. He returns it with a blank expression you can tell is meant to be construed as scathing. “You are!!! See you just coughed!”

“That doesn’t mean shit. That blanket has more dust leaping off it than some stuffy old geaser’s wig job,”

You furrow your eyebrows. “Don’t you mean dandruff?”

“No, I didn’t. Look, just, stop shaking that fucking blanket,” and he coughs again, except this one is a lot more throaty and you honestly stop and put a hand on his back because that seems like the right thing to do. When he’s finished, he moves you off of him angrily.

And then sneezes four times in a row. His sneezes kind of sound like a cat meowing. A weird cat.

You gesture to the pile of blankets and cushions you’ve arranged on his bed for him. “There! Now you’re all ready to go to sleep.”

“Not in that shit,” he bites. He walks out of the room, and you sigh, and you follow him into his apartment’s kitchen, where he’s pouring himself a glass of water.

He downs it. “We’re going to C8 64 today,”

He’s talking about the map he got Sawtooth to construct for his planet. It’s the (very vague) grid reference for an inscription he said was Important, capital I, to decrypting the location of some Quest Shit, capital Q and S. To your memory the wall was nothing but a bunch of weird carved depictions of some salamanders. And who cares about that nonsense??? (Dirk does, apparently, but Dirk’s always had the perchance for that silly stuff.)

“But isn’t that a four day trip?” you remember.

“We’re going on the board,”

“Why can’t you send Sawtooth out to take a photo of it?”

“Because he’s in J9, almost eight hundred miles away from C, taking a photo of something else.” he rolls his eyes, and tries to clear his throat, to no avail. He starts rummaging through his sylladex, checking supplies.

This isn’t on. You remember when he tried to do the same nonsense when some skeletal waster caught the sole of his foot and he couldn’t move it for a few days without tearing the wound open.

“We’re not going,” you say firmly, but you think he can tell you don’t really want to be firm and also that your voice is wobbling.

“Okay, you can just not come. I’ll go by myself,” and he sets his glass down by the sink and literally walks off.

“Dirk!” you say, but he’s starting to speed walk and soon he’ll flash step, and you panic.

And tackle him.

You both land with an ‘oof’ right before his front door. He tries scrambling and shifting you off to move for the handle, but you grab him back again and use as much of your body weight as you can to pin him down proper.

“Jake,” he snarls, face against the carpet.

“What,” you pant, “is with you!! Just take a bloody rest you nancy!!”

“No-” and he starts wheezing again, and you’re aware maybe pinning him to the ground wasn’t the best idea, and you roll off him. He coughs and coughs and coughs and sits upright so he can cough harder.

His face goes really red, and he tries holding his mouth shut but it doesn’t work, so he covers his mouth with the back of his hand and his shades are skew-iff and you don’t really know what to do so you run up and fill up his glass of water again and sit back down besides him again, cross-legged.

“I got you some more water okay? It’s alright,” He still hasn’t stopped coughing. You can see he’s having difficulty breathing.

He forces himself upright, suddenly, and you grab his elbow crossly because if he’s trying to move towards the front door there is no way in hell you’re letting him. But he’s trying to move the other way, and you can hear his throat heaving then, so you let go and he moves quickly into the bathroom. You try and help him but he shoves you away and slams the door, clicking the lock.

“Dirk? Oh for fucks sake Dirk!!” and you rattle the door and listen to him coughing and then starting to throw up.

Once you stop being annoyed and just start feeling sad and worried and also a little sick from hearing Dirk be sick, you put the glass of water down by the door and huff back into the kitchen/sitting room.

You try to remember what the best thing to do after throwing up is. You haven’t done that in years and you can’t remember what it’s like. You remember it tastes tingly down your throat. And bad. And that you’ll be hungry! Yes!

You start rummaging in the cupboards for some food (there’s absolutely nothing) when you hear the bathroom bolt unlock. A truly ancient packet of noodles is torn open and sat cooking in a bowl of boiling water by the time he saunters back into the room, but it’s more of a stagger and he doesn’t look at you. His hair is a mess and his face is splotchy.

You walk up to him and try to give him a hug. “Fuck off,” he reprimands weakly, and he shoves you off him again. He’s brought the glass with him and it’s empty, so you refill it again.

“I made some food for you,”

“You don’t eat after throwing up. Jesus.”

“Oh I thought you did?”

“No,” and he sneezes and sniffs for a while.

“Sorry,” you say. You look at the front door and back to him warily. “Um, please don’t go out, okay?”

“Whatever,” he says. Unwilling to concede defeat, he adds, “I have coding to do.”

“… please don’t do that either. Um. You’re really sick.”

“I’m not sick,”

“Actually, you’re the sickest bro this side of the incipicircle,” and you smile and punch his shoulder.

He blinks when you hit him and flashes a quick smirk, pushing a bit of his hair out of his eyes. His nose dribbles. “Dude, it’s incipisphere.”

“Whatever!!”

 

You eat the noodles Dirk didn’t want for dinner and leave him alone in his room, deciding to sleep on the couch. In the morning you come to check up on him, just in case he’s not feeling too hot, and you see him asleep at his computer. The nest you made him is untouched.

You sigh angrily and debate between poking him to get to move him into bed or just leaving him as he is.

Deciding on the former, you prod his cheek roughly and he starts upright.

“Huh? What’s-” and he coughs a few times. His cheek glistens with drool.

“Go to bed, Dirk.” you say determinedly. You point at his bed for emphasis.

You see his naked eyes move from your finger, to the bed, to his pc, and back to you slowly. Like a tinkerbull.

“’m not tired,”

You want to grab him and throw him on the god damn bed and demand he sleep, but you know that’s not a nice thing to do. You sigh and feel your shoulders droop. “Do you want some more water?”

He eyes you up, and shrugs a shoulder.

“I’ll get you some.” you say, and you fetch him some, along with a wad of toilet paper for his drool. By the time you come back he’s asleep on the desk again. You put the water besides his lamp, save his work, and turn the computer off.

 

 

You marathon Resident Evil and feel frustrated that Dirk doesn’t realise how sick he is. Also sad, because he’s snapping at you more than usual.

Halfway through the second one you heard him go into another coughing fit, and, worried, you dash into his room to see him with his hands curled on the edge of the desk, shaking.

You put a hand on his back and message it and he takes a long drink of water. He permits an arm around his shoulders.

 

Later, he makes himself a cup of hot water with sugar, absentmindedly and exhaustedly saying he’d read it helped somewhere online (but you don’t think he thinks it’ll work, and you have your own suspicions), and curls up with you on the couch. He doesn’t stop sneezing. He gets through the rest of the Resident Evil films and the first half of Kill Bill with you before he dozes off. You know Dirk isn’t the sleepy type.

You bring out your phone to check if the girls are online, to ask if they have any advice. They are. You almost click onto Jane’s handle and ask, but the thought of Dirk more than likely not wanting people involved wafts into your mind, and you chew your lip in conflict.

You message Jane anyway, not mentioning it and instead shooting the breeze. After ten minutes she says she has to go, apologizes and logs out, and you look at your boyfriend, curled on your hip.

You think about how close he is, with his hands splayed on you, and you blush. You remember what it was like to kiss him properly, when you did so for the first time a couple of weeks ago – that beheaded head snog thing did NOT count – you remember your mouth under his and haha very funny Mr English lets not think about this while Dirk’s asleep like that that’s a bit creepy and very ungainly and mighty inappropriate thank you!

You go back to Kill Bill and get lost in watching the guns.

 

He coughs himself awake a film later, face taut. You stroke his back, worried, and his stomach growls.

“Do you want some grub?”

“No insects thanks,” he says, voice thick with mucus. He seems to be getting worse, but you think he’s trying to make fun of you.

“I won’t, I promise, but I also might need to move,”

He grumbles but lets you up. You smile a little.

You rummage through your sylladex and find a few tins of different types of beans, so you kick up a weird pasta-and-bean meal in about half an hour.

Dirk takes one look at it and raises an eyebrow.

“Shush up. It’s cross-continental,” you say, and he eats it with you, amused. It makes you glad to know he’s eating, because you know he hasn’t in about 24 hours now.

Halfway done, he starts coughing again (not with the food in his mouth, thank goodness). He powers through though and afterwords he sits up straight.

“That was alright,” he says, trying to be surprised and make a joke out of it (not your proudest meal), but in his tiredness it just comes out unintentionally thankful.

“No problem!!”

He gets sleepy again after that.

“I need a shower,” he says an hour later.

“Okay,”

He staggers upright. You scowl a little at his wincing. “Are you going to be alright?”

“I can look after myself, thanks,” he tries to snap.

You don’t reply and he walks out of the room. He stumbles getting the hallway door open.

Your Whatever-senses tingling, you follow him into the hall and notice he’s left the bathroom door open.

You peer past the room and watch as he gets into the bath and under the shower head, fully clothed, and turns it on. He makes a noise of surprise when he finds himself covered in water and you stifle a laugh, until he sees you and his expression is both confused and also demanding an answer and then you do actually giggle, because it’s both the least and most Dirk-like thing you think you’ve ever seen him do. (something in your stomach flips in worry.)

“Come on you goof,” you say, and you help him hop out of the tub. You feel his skin burning hot, and he looks exhausted and very confused. His limbs go floppy in your arms.

“Jeepers,” you say, a tad more than slightly concerned. You check his forehead because you’ve seen people do that in films and yeah, he really is baking hot. He has a trail of snot down his face. You grab a towel and dry and wipe him off the best you can and feel a little embarrassed for him, and he half-heartedly tries to stop you.

After, you drag him by the wrist to his bedroom and his bed, which he still hasn’t slept in, and you tell him you’ll be back in five minutes with some water and you want him to put some pyjamas on, okay? And he nods but for some reason you’re not sure if he heard you.

When you come back he’s still standing in the same place, looking at the bed blankly.

“Dirk?” you ask.

“Mmm?” he asks slowly.

“You’re kind of acting funny,” you say.

“My head hurts,” he agrees, and that’s a really strange reply from him.

“…do you have any headache pills or anything?”

“I’m not sick,” he croaks, and he rubs his eye.

You put the water on his table. “No, you’re not sick,” you say carefully.

“I know,”

“But could you take some just in case?”

“Just in case,” he repeats. He sneezes and sniffs right after.

“You’re not sick,” you assert, “but maybe it might be a good idea, right?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, it might be a good idea,”

“Where do you keep them?”

He draws them out of his sylladex with a rhyme so bad it stumbles off his tongue like someone tripping over their trainers. “My friend Jim” with “Aspirin”. You watch (make) him take a couple and then tell him to get into his pyjamas.

He doesn’t. You frown.

“I’m not wrestling you out of your clothes,”

“Haha,” he says, “That’d be funny.”

“Go to sleep now, okay?”

“Okay,”

He lies down full clothed, still damp, and wraps the blankets around him. You make yourself take his shoes off, because he seems to have forgotten them. You honestly have no idea why he wears them around the house.

He mumbles something when you chuck them across the room, and then you decide to leave him be.

 

Dirk doesn’t get out of bed the next day. You bring your laptop into his room and lie next to him and you both watch My Little Pony and Warhorse and Spirit because you know those are his favourite, on low volume and low brightness with the lights off because he asks so. He comes and goes out of consciousness, and says weird things, and coughs so hard you think he’ll throw up his lungs. He doesn’t, thank god, but he keeps coughing up this horrible flemy-like goop that the Intranets warned you about. His snot has blood in it and he gets a nosebleed later that day from the sneezing.

You make a noodle-sachet broth for him because he tells you he doesn’t want to eat, and you spoon feed him like a baby. He tries to do it himself but his arms are weak and he keeps dropping the spoon, and after almost burning his arm you commandeered the task from him.

 

The day after, he coughs really hard again and throws up right down his front, and it’s horrible. He slurs out that he’s really really sorry, Jake, and he almost looks like he’s going to cry, so you near tear his shirt off of him and change the covers and steely tell him he’s got nothing to be sorry for. You feel terrible for him. He starts burning up again and you use a flannel over his forehead to try and cool him down.

In the middle of the night he stumbles out of bed to refill his glass of water, unwilling to disturb you, and collapses in the bathroom. His coughing wakes you and he apologises again as you flick the bathroom light on (Dirk always walks around the house in the dark. You reckon it’s because he thinks he’s a ninja).

You give him a piggy back ride back the length from his room (i.e. a whole few meters) and he whispers Hi ho, silver, and away, into your ear in a complete monotone as you enter his bedroom, which makes you laugh. He smiles too, and it’s weirdly alien, and you give him a big cuddle and sleep next to him. In the morning there’s a snot patch on your chest but you couldn’t care less.

 

A few days later, his fever passes like the clouds rolling past the sun. He doesn’t exactly spring up out of bed, with his limbs still weak and his cough still bad, but the tired-weirdness and the forehead-heat goes and he returns to being Dirk dirk. You know this because when you start spoonfeeding him dinner again he looks at the spoon blankly and tells you to fuck right the hell off.

“My bones hurt,” he states flatly, working on his laptop. He sneezes again.

“Well you have been in bed for a good few days,” you reply, next to him, on your own laptop.

“I can’t lift my arms above my head and I need a shower.” he says, matter-of-fact, and considering Dirk isn’t the person to complain, you wonder what he wants exactly.

“What, do you need help washing your hair?” you tease.

He doesn’t say anything.

You blink and your fingers pause on the keys. “Um.”

“Only if you’re alright with it,”

You pause. “Bro I’ve quite literally been clearing up your sick all week, it’s not that weird!” you say, but it is actually a pretty weird request, and he coughs, embarrassed. “…do you want me to run you a bath?”

“A barth?” he says, eyeing you with disdain.

“I know you’re more a shower lad but I reckon it’d cheer you up. Baths are great!”

“I’ve had a bath before, thanks.”

“I know!!” you say.

He thinks, and looks at his hands, weak from disuse. “Knock yourself out, I guess.” he says.

 

So you run him one. You alchemized some bubbly stuff ages ago (back when you had a good amount of grist and didn’t realise you’d still be playing three months later) which you have started rationing for yourself, but you think Dirk deserves some. He’s had a rough week. You swill the water around until it’s nice and hot and honestly? You’re a little jealous.

He knocks on the door before coming in, which is a bit weird, because this is his house and all!

He enters with a towel wrapped around him and oh my god you didn’t think about that at all he’s naked under that!! You have a small minor panic as your chest leaps but you keep smiling up at him from your position on the floor. Oh god??

“Uh, could you look away?” Dirk asks, and you apologise and nod very fast, clamming your eyes shut and turning away.

“Say when,” you say a little shakily. “Haha, do you remember when we both had that wash in that lake by Jane’s house?

You hear a splash next to you. “She got so mad,”

“Dunno what was even to get mad about,” you say.

“Pretty sure she was worried in case some giant Loch Ness skele was gonna shoot outta it. Who knows. Maybe she just gets mad at skinny dipping as a concept. When.”

“When what sorry?”

“You told me to tell you to say when,”

“Oh right.” and you open your eyes and he’s looking at the taps. “We weren’t really skinny dipping though… we had our pants on,”

“True,” he says. You don’t look down – Jake my good man you are a godforsaken fool – but you notice he’s gathered some of the bubbles up anyway. He prods his own arm. “It’s weird, it’s like I can lift them up to shoulder height, but no higher, or they start whining. Fuckin’ pathetic, if you ask me.”

“Not pathetic,” you say, leaning on the rim of the tub and pouting a little in concern.

He looks at you with his dark amber eyes and you are struck with a mad urge to kiss him, but you think that might be more than a bit rude, even if you are dating.

He submerges, then, and his knees rise out of the water and he blows a few bubbles to the tune of that one knocking tune, before surfacing.

Some of the big bubbles fall down his face, and his arm goes to push them aside but he’s right, it doesn’t move very high, so he starts blowing it off with his mouth. You giggle and wipe it off with your hand. While you’re there, you shift his hair out of his eyes too, sticking your tongue out in concentration as you arrange his fringe. He has a really strange parting.

“You gonna wash my hair or what? This is already suitably awkward,” he asks after a while before sneezing again, seemingly amused.

“Oh! Sorry,” you say, retracting your hand. You look around the bathroom for the shampoo he uses.

“That orange one,” he points to with his hand still in the water, watching your gaze.

Of bloody course it’d be the orange one. Colour you fucking surprised. “Aha! Found it,”

“I literally just pointed at it,”

“FOUND it!” you repeat, a little louder to piss him off, grabbing it from the shelf and sitting back down. You squirt a bit onto your palm, which you then lower past the bubbles and into the water, to add a bit of moisture.

He leans his head over a bit so you have a good angle, which you are thankful for. You massage it gently - which feels really queerly intimate, because you know he doesn’t let anyone fondle his locks!!

He’s closes his eyes, and you continue, adding a little more water so it lathers properly, making sure to get the back of his neck and the side you cant reach very well. His blonde hair goes dark in the water, a mouse brown, and you think it suits him.

“Okay,” you say, “give it a dunk,”

He does and you go to rinse his hair out. He starts at your hands and surfaces only his face. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Rinsing??”

He blinks. “Right,” and he goes back down again and lets you rake your fingers through his hair again, until the water around him clouds with product.

He lifts just his face up again.

You look down at him questioningly.

“You son of a bitch,” he says slowly, humorously. His mouth moving makes small ripples in the bubbles.

“I beg your pardon?”

He splashes you suddenly, and you squawk and lean backwards.

“Stop oogling my admittedly magnificent naked form, you bastard, I can see your eyes moving,”

You feel yourself go a dark colour. “I was not!! I assure you I was not!” he splashes you again. “I wasn’t!!! I haven’t looked once!! ”

“Bullshit,” he laughs and he sits up, and you splash him right back.

Once the bathroom is suitably sopping from your unruly waterfight, he informs you that while that was fuckin pittance in terms of his usual regime, he’s getting out now. He doesn’t give you any other warning, just stands up with a slosh, and you turn your head so fast and shut your eyes so tight you almost give yourself whiplash.

You hear him rustling around with a towel, and then stumble a bit from his lamb legs. “You’re laying it on a bit too thick, you know.” he drawls, and he snorts his nose.

You stammer out a noise of protest, eyes slammed closed, and you’re fairly sure the ground is going to open up and swallow you. “Shut up! I wasn’t.” you say crossly.

“Alright,” he accepts, and then he requests you dry his hair, so you open your eyes again. Angrily standing up and grabbing a towel, you work it until he looks like a large, brown, fluffy puppy.

He looks at himself in the tiny mirror over the sink and sticks his tongue in his molar. “Thanks for making me look like a toilet brush.”

You ruffle it, still annoyed that Dirk thinks you’re a pervert, and look at him through the mirror.

“Marginally better,” he says, scathingly, but realises he can’t go to sort it out himself. To be a dick, he walks off to get changed, leaving you to clear up the bathroom.

 

You watch more films the next day until you find a horse rpg game online, which he plays through in about two seconds. You’re both suitably bored, to say the least.

“Jesus,” he says, lying on his bed, throat groggy.

“What?” you say, lying next to him.

“How long have I been sick, anyway?”

“Oh so you admit you’re sick now!!!” you joke, but he doesn’t comment. “Umm.. a week and a bit? Since you started sneezing proper.”

“Do the girls know?”

“No.” you say, and he looks at you and sniffs.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

You blink. “Because you wouldn’t have wanted me to?”

He thinks about this for a while.

You notice his ceiling has old bluetack marks on it. You wonder what he stuck up there, and why he took it down, since his walls are covered in anthropomorphic horse pornography.

“Um. Thanks, I guess.” he says.

You smile warmly. “It’s alright,”

He grabs your hand. “Uh,” he starts, and looks really embarrassed (Dirk’s embarrassed look translates to Slightly Perturbed and it took you a while to pick up on it). “Seriously. Thanks. For like, being cool.”

Your face and stomach flutters at the sincerity.

And then you think.

You eyes widen with the revelation.

Oh no.

“Dirk… Dirk us kissing is what made you sick!!”

“What?”

You sit up. “By jove! It all makes sense!” but then you look at him and feel you face fall. “Shit bro can we never lock lips again??!!”

He blinks. “Uh, no, that’s not it, that’s-”

“You’re immune network is really weak right? Because you grew up without plants and earth!! And you got the sniffles when we all met up but not this bad and that’s because you hadn’t been that close to any of us even then and it took two weeks to get bad didn’t it? You got sick two weeks after we kissed!”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. “System, Jake, it’s immune system.”

You think and lie back down. “Golly,” you say flatly.

He seems to be thinking hard. “It can’t be that. I probably…” he trails off. You can read his mind from here. He’s thinking ‘Jesus christ’. “…reacted to your dirt germs.”

“…dirt germs?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t eat dirt as a kid. I can literally see it,” he pauses. “In fact you probably still do that, worms an’ all.”

“I don’t eat dirt!!” you say hotly.

“You do when we wrestle.”

It takes you a moment, but when you get it you are aghast. “Excuse me when the fuck have you beaten me?? I always boot your stubborn ass right past mars!!!

“Mars doesn’t exist anymore,”

“Shut up!!!”

He snickers, and quickly kisses you cheek.


End file.
